United States

Several days ago, Bank Of America was "confused" why retail spending refuses to pick up, although it hoped that this would be a one time aberation and that the official government data would disprove what it was seeing in its card data. Well, that did not happen after the headline retail sales printed moments ago at -0.1% in December, falling from an upward revised 0.4%.

As Bloomberg summarizes, sales at U.S. retailers declined in December to wrap the weakest year since 2009, raising concern about the momentum in consumer spending heading into 2016.

Late last month, Freeport McMoRan co-founder and executive chairman James R. Moffett was shown the door.

Moffett, known as the “last of the old-time wildcatters”, was a legend in the industry but made a fatal mistake in 2013: he paid $2.1 billion for McMoRan Exploration Co (an oil-and-gas company the parent company had separated from in the 1990s), and $6.9 billion for Plains Plains Exploration & Production.

As WSJ put it, “the deals in part were a bet that oil prices would remain high.”

• Crude sinks 4 percent as market braces for more Iranian oil (Reuters)
• Plunge in crude oil prices send stock futures sliding (Reuters)
• Oil Slides, Deepening Gloom in Stocks as Bond Buyers Celebrate (BBG)
• China Stocks Enter Bear Market, Erasing Gains From State Rescue (BBG)
• Goldman Says It Will Pay $5.1b in U.S. Mortgage Probe (CBS)
• Friendly no more: Trump, Cruz erupt in bitter fight at Republican debate (Reuters)
• China to expand coverage of advantaged import tax policies nationwide (Xinhua)

   "We're gonna need a bigger Bullard"

    - overheard on a trading desk this morning.

Among the presidential candidates of the Republican Party and their foreign policy leaders on Capitol Hill the cry is almost universal:

Barack Obama has no strategy for winning the war on ISIS.

This criticism, however, sounds strange coming from a party that controls Congress but has yet to devise its own strategy, or even to authorize the use of U.S. military force in Syria.

Congress has punted. And compared to the cacophony from Republican ranks, Barack Obama sounds like Prince Bismarck.